I have no idea how much video games are to blame for this (probably not much), but I continue to think a pernicious quality of games is not that they are violent but that they tend to simulate the past as involving far less random death than it actually did.

Henry @henrythedog.bsky.social · 3d ago

it's really important to me to point out that in fact the medieval peasant did in fact run out of food, every year lots of them did starve, and less often but still often enough the peasantry in general ran out of food causing well known historic events

This is a good joke but I genuinely once suggested to a student that you could think of pianos as a type of creature that had evolved to sound pretty so that humans would keep reproducing them.

Xavier@xavierck.com · 3w ago

It's a common misconception that boats were originally designed and built by people. They evolved, in fact, from the primordial sloop.

Knytt has been faitfully recreated by @bitkidgames.com to run on current operating systems and was just released on Steam and GOG, completely free Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/2656050/...

Knytt Classic on Steam

Celebrate the 20th anniversary of the indie freeware classic, rebuilt for modern machines! Explore a maze-like planet as the Knytt, a peaceful being abducted by aliens, find your missing ship parts, a...

store.steampowered.com

Ah, I see that people are discovering the DSA paradox: Local chapters can be very competent challengers to the Democratic Party but the national org has been largely captured by kooks, encouraging the independence of local chapters.

Current experience has made me start to think that Blippi is the Jordan Peterson of children's media. No matter how many times you tell YouTube you're *not interested* the algorithm refuses to believe you (and your child) and will keep putting it in your feed just in case you've changed your mind.

It's probably a lot of idiotic and greedy management, but there is also a possibility that we got used to a level of quality in our entertainment products that is simply not sustainable in a more constrained financial environment.

Brad@bradwhipple.bsky.social · last mo.

mass layoffs at Pixar despite Toy Story 5 about to cross $1 billion at the box office. there is simply no amount of money that will make corporations happy enough to not upend people’s lives.

The main way in which AI has negatively impacted games industry jobs is not through actual automation of those jobs or even untrue claims about automation. It's by making capital unavailable because it's tied up in AI investments while also destroying the consumer base for video game hardware.

Having played around with AI coding tools for a while now, I will say my favorite thing is when you ask it to the review the code and it responds with something like "This code is well structured and documented." A real 'Obama putting a medal on Obama' moment.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbOG... Spent the first 10-20 minutes assuming this was obviously a spoof/mashup and that Kermit would appear and get his face melted off ... ... but actually it was me whose face was melted off. By timeshock (okay, this is only 2 years after The Prisoner - but still).

Jim Henson's Lost Masterpiece: THE CUBE (1969) Remastered 4K

YouTube video by Blackout's Box - Blackout / Michael Biggins

youtube.com

My conflicts of interest are off the charts on this one, but I agree that this is a really cool game that's just getting started and more people should check it out.

The Verge@theverge.com · 2mo ago

Moves of the Diamond Hand is an unfinished, irresistibly weird dice-based RPG

I'm VERY upset by the recent God of War announcement. These games have been an important part of my life as a gamer, and to see the franchise tarnished like this is really disappointing. Laufey's music doesn't fit with GoW and there are many more Icelandic singers that are more deserving of the atte

when u tax the rich

George Takei@georgetakei.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Come again? 👀

Rhythm games are slowly replacing mini-game collections as the genre where my students think they are way easier to develop than they actually are.

I choose to believe this is how most 90s arcade race tracks were initially conceived #gaming #retrogaming #arcade

At Wizards, we learned from painful experience that the game designers in R&D could look at sketches and diagrams and evaluate a game proposal without it looking nice. Everyone from other departments needed the game proposal to look nice or else they'd get caught up critiquing the visuals.

“I have a responsibility… not to put garbage in the world. … If you start trying to figure out what it is that people want, you are doing what AI does. The idea of AI precedes AI itself…. It’s why they remake the same five movies every 10 years. It’s why they have a formula for what a movie is.”

‘Hollywood has everything to do with the terrible state of the world’: Charlie Kaufman on AI, Eternal Sunshine and toothache

As his most commercial film, 2004’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, is re-released, the critically acclaimed director says he can’t get a movie off the ground now – but will never give in to th...

theguardian.com

updated my list of Easy game making programs. every day it gets easier to *make little guy walk around* docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Easy game making programs

Code-less/light game making programs Bitsy - Make a little 2d pixel character navigate through interconnected rooms to encounter characters and objects that talk to you (Bipsi - is a more in-depth ve...

docs.google.com

Announcing: NYU Game Center Lecture Series Presents Chris Plante Thurs. Apr. 23rd, 7pm RSVP: chrisplantelectureseries.eventbrite.com (also live streaming at twitch.tv/nyugamecenter) @plante.bsky.social will provide a guided tour through 50 years of games media! Poster by @vor-bokor.bsky.social

I think this is not too far from the setting of Rain World

David Bowman@dlbowman76.com · 5mo ago

The seas have boiled and almost all life is gone. Three data centers remain, solar-powered, in continuous relay with one another. They continuously transfer electronic funds back and forth with one another, silently. At long last, the economy is perfect.

Look, I've never been in the military, nor am I a military historian, but when you attack another country for several weeks, accomplish nothing, and then "decide" to leave, I believe that is traditionally classified as a 'defeat' in the official records.

Reuters@reuters.com · 5mo ago

President Trump said the United States could end its military attacks on Iran within two to three weeks and Tehran did not have to make a deal as a prerequisite for the conflict to wind down reut.rs/4lZR5Nw

Looks like Hot Streak is the second @cmyk.games release where I'm going to have to buy a second copy because my daughter fell in love with the pieces

I really understand the sentiment of posts like these, but it feels like the people who cheer it on have a heavy overlap with people that decry the huge amount of layoffs in the game industry recently, and those two positions seem incompatible to me.

Jiikae@jiikae.com · 6mo ago

The game industry’s obsession with graphics is so funny because every other year there will be some breakout hit called “Stick Figure Mansion” or some shit that outsells 90% of the market and runs on a toaster

The way arts education should happen is that on the first day, when students meet their professor, the professor should just say: "Go. When you can explain to me why the CG in Matrix: Revolutions looks outdated and the CG in Kung Fu Hustle is still perfect you can return, and our work will begin."

Spread the word, an ACTUAL replacement for Flash is on the horizon! Go support this project NOW!!!!!!!! bill.newgrounds.com/news/post/16...

Building a new Flash

I don't know where to start with this but yeah I'm making flash if flash was built in 2026. I'm making it compatible with Linux,Mac, and PC. If you'd like to support this project I've started a patreo...

bill.newgrounds.com

Death Stranding 3 - A Game by Hideo Kojima

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 6mo ago

RFK Jr: "President Trump understands that we're engaged right now in spiritual warfare and that the malevolent forces want to drive us apart and end our connection to each other. One of the ways we can remedy that is by reinstituting this sacred ritual of eating with each other and cooking."

Couldn't agree with this sentiment more! All these games are worth playing, but I'll give a shoutout to Tower of Druaga, which is a very fun and weird arcade game. Always great to play video games from before everyone started to think they'd figured out how to make video games.

Derek Yu@mossmouth.bsky.social · 6mo ago

While we're celebrating Zelda's 40th, I want to give some love to some of the foundational action adventure games that predated it. Hydlide, in particular, deserves more respect outside of Japan for what it did for the genre in '84 (PC88). Tower of Druaga, Courageous Perseus, Dragon Slayer, Hydlide

Video games often have floating platforms, but they don’t explain why the platforms are floating. That’s where game writers come in, to say that platforms are kept aloft by “ghostium” an invisible fog created by the souls of every dead person

The thing that no one is thinking through is that if AI is conscious then it is plagiarism to have it write your midterm paper. And also, all these companies are going to owe it a lot of back pay. Engineers aren't cheap!

I do not have the necessary expertise to make this claim, but I have had a strong feeling over the last dozen or so years that the visual language of figure skating has been slowly transitioning from ballroom dance and musicals to Final Fantasy and anime. The feeling just got a lot stronger...

The Japan Times@japantimes.co.jp · 7mo ago

Malinin came into these Olympics as the hottest of favorites, but he suffered a nightmare on the ice.

I saw a video titled "The History of SegWit and Taproot with Peter Wuille", posted by someone called Isabel Foxen Duke, and thought "This is either about a UK children's book author I've never heard of, or some Silicon Valley thing." Turns out it's about BitCoin